This invention relates to a new and improved self adjustable, soft neck support collar which adjusts for and restrains lateral, forward and backward movement of the neck to ensure neutral positioning of the chin and neck.
A wide variety of neck support collars are in the market, and typical collars are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,964,962; 2,389,690; 2,806,471; 3,964,474; 4,582,051; 4,700,697; and, 4,708,129. Some of these patents describe devices which are air inflatable, and while these devices provide support for a user's neck, this support obviously will not be adjustable, since air is the supporting medium. Other of these patented devices are fairly complicated collars which are expensive, and still other such devices require adjustable straps. Other patents show soft, unitary, solid foam neck support collars, but they fail to provide sufficient resiliency when the neck is at rest, and do not provide enough resistance to lateral, forward or backward bending of the neck. Also, solid foam block materials in general tend to buckle about midway along their length due to applied pressure caused by neck motion.
It would be desirable to provide a soft neck support device which has a simple construction and is inexpensive to manufacture. Also, the device should impart suitable neck restraint, and is self adjusting in the sense that as the user's neck moves from away from an erect position, the neck support provides increasing resistance in the direction of neck motion, rather than buckling.